Sports memorabilia has taken a hit, but still in the game

BLAIR DEDRICK ORTMANN

Published 12:00 am, Friday, May 28, 2010

Photo: Beaumont

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Richard Tyner, better known as "Coach" has been collecting and trading sports collectibles for 30 years. In his shop, located on S 11th street at the old K-Mart Flea Market/Bingo Hall, Tyner has just about everything including shelves of baseball card packs like this that still have the bubble gum. Dave Ryan/The Enterprise less

Richard Tyner, better known as "Coach" has been collecting and trading sports collectibles for 30 years. In his shop, located on S 11th street at the old K-Mart Flea Market/Bingo Hall, Tyner has just about ... more

Photo: Beaumont

Sports memorabilia has taken a hit, but still in the game

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In the last 30 years, Coach Richard Tyner has seen about 15 sports cards dealers come and go in Beaumont. "I was the first one and I'm the last one standing," said the retired teacher, assistant coach of the 1982 West Brook state championship football team and owner of R&D's Cards and Collectibles.

Tyner admits he had it easy since the business, now in a little shop tucked away in the back of a flea market on 11th Street, has been mostly a hobby for him all these years.

"That's how I'm able to maintain it," he said of a pastime he now sees as dying.

"I would buy a case of cards and go through them looking for that one player," Walker said. "Then, I got to where I was throwing out $50 or $100 to buy the card I wanted."

"It's like a lotto ticket, hoping you get the player you want," he said of the card packs.

Tyner recalls 1990 as the year manufacturers decided to start making sub-sets, then added autographed inserts and pieces of players' jerseys, hats, bats and other items to the cards.

The "added value" is an attraction for off-and-on card collector Kevin Moore of Sour Lake.

The 32-year-old contractor said he started collecting as a teenager, but lost interest for about 10 years before the big trunk of cards he had saved from his early years made him decide to pick it back up.

He's taking it seriously this time, and instead of the 50-cent packs of cards he bought as a youth, he now occasionally buys $100 packs that include only five cards.

But they're the ones with pieces of the player's actual jersey embedded in them. One of Moore's best cards, a Dan Marino jersey card worth $175, came from such a pack.

"It's the thrill of what you might get, plus, for the collector, what I might get for my collection," Moore said. "My wife thinks I'm hoarding cards. It's not that I'm hoarding, but it's a hobby. I don't put my cards before my family.

"It's fun to collect because it brings out the kid in you, but it gets expensive."

Expensive enough, in fact, that Moore regularly talks it over with his wife before he makes a purchase.

"It's turned from fun to an investment."

For instance, one of Moore's cards is a 2001 autographed Albert Pujols card worth $3,000 at the moment.

"He's on pace to break all the home run records," Moore said, explaining the value. Plus, Pujols has not tested positive for steroids.

If he did, the value of the card could plummet.

"It's not just how good the players do, but, now, in the Internet age, it's how popular they are."

And while Moore sticks to the cards, Walker opted for the broader portfolio.

Occasionally he hits a jackpot; the day he found two Michael Jordan figures in the reduced section in Wal-Mart was one of them. He went on to re-sell them for $150 each.

And there are bad times, like the steroids scandal referred to by Moore that dropped the prices of memorabilia of every player affected.

Walker still has hundreds of folders of the cards that dealt him into sports memorabilia collecting in the first place, he said, but wonders whether kids will be able to amass anything similar with cards selling at $5 a pack.

"It's directed toward college kids and adults now," he said of the hobby. "There's nothing out there affordable enough to collect.

"It's heartbreaking because real fans and kids can't get it."

There's a second reason Walker thinks sports collecting has dimmed in popularity.

"The way these players act today, their images and morals, they're not living a good life," he said. "Back then, you never heard about players getting in trouble, except Ty Cobb. Now, they're breaking all the laws like rock stars and movie stars. They're not people you can admire.